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A Recall of Benjamin Fi^anklin 



AN ADDRESS BY THE 

HON. JOSEPH BUFFINGTON, LLD. 

Judge of the Third Circuit Court of the United States 



DELIVERED AT LANCASTER, PA., ON JUNE 12, 1902, BEFORE 

THETA chapter of PENNSYLVANIA OF THE PHI BETA 

KAPPA SOCIETY, IN CONNECTION WITH 

FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE 



PRE55 OF 

The New era printing Company 
Lancaster, Pa. 



Tran'i^s'V.-d from 
' f • ■uUical Division 



6> 






A EECALL OF BENJAMUST FKANKLIN. 

HON. JOSEPH BUFFINGTON. 

. The greatest romance of the new world is the actual life of 
Benjamin Franklin, for that life was the dream of new world 
possibilities reduced to reality. A seventeen-year-old appren- 
tice ; a runaway from a colony where he was too well known to 
longer remain; a penniless stranger in another where he 
started his life anew without acquaintances, friends or influ- 
ence; an unaided maker of fame and fortune for himself at 
forty-two years of age ; a man of tremendous executive capac- 
ity and money-amassing possibilities, he retired at that age on 
a fair competence and became a contemplative philosopher; 
thenceforth the giver of his life to the lives of his fellow men 
— the energizing magnet around which all the altruism of the 
most free-thought community in America centered. The 
corner-stone layer of that colonial union on which many claim 
the nation was subsequently built. A scientist whom the 
world recognized and revered. The first great teacher through 
the press of practical life — its habits, its sanity, and its econ- 
omies. An inventor of things that pertain to the necessities 
of life, who refused to lay the tribute of monopoly therefor 
upon his fellows. At fifty-one the solitary representative, in 
the alien and indifferent atmosphere of England, of colonial 
rights. A lonely prophet in an old world ignorant of the fu- 
ture of an unknown new world. At seventy, a signer of our 
Declaration of Independence. At seventy-two the all-power- 
ful advocate of weak and struggling colonies in the imperial 

3 



4 A Recall of Benjamin FranMin. 

court of France. At seventy-seven, a far-seeing maker and 
signatory to the Treaty of Paris. At eighty-one, a maker of 
our Constitution — neighbor, publicist, author, teacher, scien- 
tist, prophet, humanist, philosopher, humanitarian, patriot 
and statesman. His story reads like the fantasies of a ro- 
mance, but its truth outvies fiction. It has been well said : 
" Great men need not that we praise them ; the need is ours 
that we know them." And in that spirit of turning our 
thoughts to and drawing a lesson from the life of one of the 
world's great, I ask you to join with me to-night in a brief re- 
call of Benjamin Franklin. Great he was. Great he has been 
for a century and great the future will hold him. The world 
does not deceive itself. It takes a really great man to be a 
great man. It takes such a man to remain great to the end of 
his life; but if the man is great and proves himself great to 
the close of his life, posterity will as distance comes turn with 
deeper reverence to a greatness that instead of disappearing 
with time is only more clearly outlined. And it is this great- 
ness of the passing years that makes the recall of the really 
great — the Franklins, the Washingtons and the Lincolns — so 
profitable. The world recognizes too that greatness is a 
growth. Mere notoriety, like a gourd, may spring up in a 
night, but national reverence of* a man's character is a thing 
of years. Like an oak it is not of a night, but is the gathering, 
silent, insistent call of a contemplative century. For when 
the world has looked up to one of its leaders as an oak tower- 
ing high and rooted deep, and when like that oak that great 
man has weathered the gale of a century's criticism and 
cynicism, and the century's end still finds his name at the 
head of the roll call of its immortals, there can be no doubt 
that its verdict is just. Such has been the case with Franklin. 
Time and distance, instead of lessening his figure, have but 
served to make it loom larger, not only on the horizon of his 
native land, but in lands beyond the sea. The fathers of your 
college, with prophetic eye, evidenced their faith in Franklin 
by giving for all time his name to the college they founded and 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 5 

time has vindicated their judgment. It therefore seems fit- 
ting, on this one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary, that 
one should choose for his theme a recall of the man. And in 
another way Franklin is peculiarly connected with this Phi 
Beta Kappa occasion, for no man was so much as he a living 
embodiment of that helpful motto of our great society — Philos- 
ophia Biou Kubernetes — Philosophy the Pilot of Life. 

No man's life can be really known without a just estimate 
of the influence upon it of those potent factors, heredity and 
environment. As seed, soil and sunshine are to plant life, so 
in human life we find in heredity the seed, and in environ- 
ment the soil and sunshine that determine the fruitage. It 
was Oliver Wendell Holmes, I think, who said : " The educa- 
tion of a child begins two hundred and fifty years before it is 
born." It follows, therefore, that he who takes the mere inci- 
dent of Franklin's 'New England birth as the keynote of his 
life has omitted from his data th^ factors of a just estimate. 
The truth is that Franklin was neither a Massachusetts nor a 
Pennsylvania man. He was essentially a Briton, but a Briton 
modified by colonial environment. In a letter addressed to 
Lord Karnes, in the early sixties, he himself says: "No man 
can more sincerely rejoice than I do on the reduction of 
Canada ; and this is not merely as I am a colonist but as I 
am a Briton. I have long been of opinion that the foundations 
of the future grandeur and stability of the British Empire 
lie in America." 

Josiah Franklin, the father of Benjamin, was an English- 
man, who emigrated to America at mature age and it is an 
interesting fact to know that within a few miles of where 
George Washington's ancestors lived in England the Frank- 
lins also dwelt. Here for generations, father and son, Frank- 
lin after Franklin, had been blacksmiths. Have you ever 
thought what a seventeenth century roadside smith was in 
England ? Let me tell you. He was the best posted man in 
all his country as to what the other counties of England were 
and what they were doing. Though his shop might be modest, 



6 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

his face begrimed and his book-learning scant, he was in the 
forefront bench of the classes in the working university of life. 
Travel in those days was not indulged in by many. It was 
only the rare few who ever got outside their own neighbor- 
hood, but the comparatively few who did were the most pro- 
gressive men of England and to the smith's shop they all in 
their journey came and had to come and the smith met them 
there. The learned, the wealthy, the powerful, the adventur- 
ous ; all who traveled from home had to come to the smith's 
forge and as he fastened the loose shoes of their horses these 
travelers left with the smith some of their news and views and 
the smith in turn gave them his own. From them he gained 
for his neighbors the news from the rest of England and in re- 
turn through these travelers he gave to the rest of England 
the news of his own vicinage. He was the real genesis of the 
mail, the newsletter, the telegraph, the newspaper of to-day, 
for all these are but as the grimy smith then was, the world's 
means of knowing what the rest of the world is doing. In the 
democracy of his shop the smith learned to stand unabashed 
before the great men with whom he was thrown in contact and 
he gathered from them the lesson that when they came to his 
shop he was the peer of the gi-eatest, for his brain and hand 
and skill were necessary to enable wealth and power, learning 
and pleasure to journey onward. The smith's shop was a 
kindergarten of democracy. But he was more than a mere 
news purveyor, for in the smith's work we have the germ of 
that quick, decisive initiative that is the keynote of the world's 
modern progress. Other artisans, the weaver, the carpenter, 
the stone cutter, the cobbler, might pause in their work to plan 
and think out the next step, but the smith, when the iron was 
hot, must, then instantly and then only, strike true and strike 
hard. So, too, in that subtlest of work, the tempering of his 
metals, he must think deeply and observe closely the effect of 
the great laws of nature, the chilling, the tempering, and 
treating of metal by the primary elements of heat and cold. 
Sudden and slow chilling, the use of oils and water for tempers 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 7 

and the many thermo-chemical problems that to-day puzzle 
the brain of great metallurgists. It is no fanciful picture that 
sees in this long line of thoughtful, successful, sturdy, English 
blacksmiths, keenly alive to the events of the day, mixers alike 
with the great and the lowly, students of nature's laws, prac- 
tical in the fruitage of their work, the prototype of the smith's 
descendant. It is no fancy to say that in this long and sturdy 
line of Saxon Franklins that our own Benjamin was then being 
fitted to be in touch with the common folk and to know their 
lives and to stand unabashed before kings. It is no imagina- 
tion that he had a heritage that naturally led to a study of 
the great laws of nature. No fancy that the forge of the Eng- 
lish roadside smith produced a colonial Franklin stove in uni- 
versal use, the best drawing chimney of his day, the man who, 
when the time came to strike, did so and who drove his blows 
quick and hard. Such was the heritage from his British 
fathers, of this man who, at fifty-four years of age, called 
himself, as we have seen, a Briton, and who regarded America 
as the seat of England's empire. 

And what the heritage from his mother ? She was the 
daughter of Captain Peter Folger, another British emigrant. 
From them Franklin inherited a blood of toleration that made 
him intolerant of New England's intolerance. Of Peter 
Folger, Parton wrote : " He was one of the few early settlers 
of Massachusetts who felt the iniquity of persecuting the 
Baptists and Quakers for opinion's sake and he lifted his voice 
against that vulgar heathenism. It was in the dark era of 
1676 when Quakers and Baptists were still in peril of being 
publicly whipped, branded and banished into the wilderness 
that honest Peter Fogel wrote his good doggerel poem, 'A 
Looking Glass of the Times,' in which those outrages were 
pronounced to be the sin of New England for which a just 
God was visiting her with Indian Wars and massacres. Dr. 
Franklin was proud to reckon among his progenitors a man 
capable of thus rebuking his generation and he quoted some 
of Peter Folger's roughest words with approbation." It was 



8 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

this inherited spirit of intolerance, this sacred right in sacred 
things, of each man to think out for himself the great problem 
of his relations to God that made Franklin begin to feel 
he was out of place in New England. Indeed, we learn that 
as a lad of seventeen he was " a little obnoxious to the growing 
party " and that '^ his indiscrete disputations about religion " 
had come to be '' pointed out with horror by good people and 
as infidel and atheist." Franklin's father meant him to be a 
clergyman, writing, he had resolved to devote him " as a tithe 
of his sons to the service of the church." I speak in no disre- 
spectful words of this noble purpose, but one cannot refrain 
from a sense of the incongruous when we picture Franklin 
forcing his unorthodox breadth of view into the narrow spirit- 
ual horizon of an orthodox New England clergyman of that 
day. Splendid as such a clergyman's work was in many ways, 
it is clear that Franklin's mind and Franklin's soul would 
have dwarfed and dwindled in the narrow localism of the 
New England theocracy of that day. He was meant for hu- 
manity and not for New England and Providence led him away 
from his birthplace to a life place that could better fit him for 
that work. His restive spirit was out of sympathy with the 
religious life around him. His inherited love for freedom of 
thought for others claimed a like right of thought-freedom for 
himself. The New England religious life in which he found 
himself was essentially self-centered and the working out of 
one's own salvation its keynote. And just as in a different 
form the selfish, self-centered monanticism of an earlier age 
had driven Luther to the broader altruism of looking out for 
the future of others besides himself so it is just as clear that 
the broad visioned, free thinking, altruistic work of one like 
Franklin, who afterwards said that, "the highest form of 
worship is service to man," lay elsewhere than in his birth- 
place. Let us turn then from that birthplace, where to him 
the times were out of joint, to the environment which wel- 
comed him as a footsore, friendless and hungry lad of seven- 
teen and in which after the world had showered its highest 



A Recall of Benjamin FranHin. 9 

honors upon him his body was laid to rest and remaineth unto 
this day. 

When young Franklin left Massachusetts I ask the candid 
reader of history to tell me to what colony could he turn save 
to those tolerant Quakers against whose persecution his sturdy 
grandfather Folger had dared to raise a solitary voice of pro- 
test. The colony of William Penn was above all others in the 
new world a place where freedom of thought and freedom of 
speech were as free as free men could make them. In that col- 
ony there was actual liberty to worship God according to the 
dictates of one's own conscience. That liberty and the con- 
science and the freedom were meant not only for the founders' 
race and church but equally for men of all other races and all 
other churches. That colony was in unique contrast to each 
and all of its sisters. Each of them had been substantially 
the outgrowth of a single race and a single religion and it is 
no reflection on any of those races or religions to say, what 
every truthful historian recognizes, that where any race, and 
especially where any one religion, has the power of monopoly, 
it rarely, if ever, fails to exert it. In the seventy odd years 
that had passed since American colonization had its begin- 
ning in the settlement at Jamestown, the Quakers had learned 
the lesson in their experience both in European despotism and 
American freedom, so-called, that all types of religion which 
were dominant in those European countries and the American 
colonies, however they difl^ered in dogma or practice, united 
in one common universal fact, that they, were all solidly 
united as members of a church militant when it came to 
handling Quakers. The Quaker had suffered from persecu- 
tion by them all, but with a vastness of generosity and with a 
liberality then unknown in the religious world, William Penn 
caught the over-looked spirit of a Master's love that '' beareth 
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things and endureth 
all things," and opened up his colony without reservation to 
all races and to all religions. " Come unto me all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." And so it came 



10 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

that when William Perm set foot on the banks of the Delaware, 
he then and there for the first time dedicated and consecrated 
to real freedom of thought American soil as it had never been 
dedicated before. When the real history of the founders of 
the American colonies shall be written it will be found that in 
broadminded outlook, in the catholicity of humanity, in just 
appreciation of the rights of all men, there was no founder on 
the American coast to compare with William Penn. The 
heart of humanity everywhere instantly responded to the gen- 
erous spirit of the Quaker's invitation. The English, the 
Welsh, the Irish, the German, the Dutch, the Scotch — all re- 
sponded as none of these races had ever done in the case of 
any other colony. Whole communities of the old world were 
depopulated to create replicas of the old mother land in the 
several counties of Pennsylvania. And so it was not only in 
races but in religions also. The church of Rome, the church of 
England, the follower of Luther, the adherent of Calvin, the 
Moravian, the Dunkard, men of all religions and men of no 
religion, found for the first time under God's sky and on 
American soil what real religious freedom actually was. It 
is a noteworthy fact that no colony had up to that time at- 
tracted the mighty trecking of those two great strains of strong 
blood, the German and the Scotch, a movement that made whole 
sections of Pennsylvania, another Germany and Scotland, as 
did this invitation of Penn. There could be no doubt that 
such a colony, whose cornerstone was that freedom of thought 
which other colonial builders had rejected, would foster intel- 
lectual growth and progress of every kind. In this colonial 
atmosphere of tolerance, art, science, learning rooted and 
ripened until Pennsylvania became the thought-leader among 
the colonies. The intellectual as well as the topographical key- 
stone and cornerstone of the nation. Her medical schools were 
the foremost in the colonies and attracted students from all 
others. Indeed, the advance of medicine and its kindred 
branch of chemistry can be shown by the fact that when one of 
the oldest of New England colleges took the then novel step of 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 11 

teaching chemistry it had to send Benjamin Silliman to Phila- 
delphia for a year's study, as the only place in America where 
he could acquire such knowledge. And thus it came about 
that the first hospital in America was established there and 
Pennsylvania's metropolis and then capital assumed the novel 
duty of cleaning the streets, a pioneer step in which we find 
the beginning of that great field of municipal hygiene and 
sanitation that to-day is the most serious duty of municipal 
life, — a step whose progressive influence has crossed the seas 
to drive yellow fever from Havana and Manila and made pos- 
sible the Penania Canal. Time permits me but to suggest to 
your minds the many evidences of the progressive life of 
colonial Pennsylvania that may be studied by anyone inter- 
ested in that subject. In our own profession the phrase, " a 
Philadelphia lawyer," became proverbial all over the land — 
and a tolerant community is wont to produce great men in the 
law — and the broad atmosphere of freedom the Pennsylvania 
lawyer imbibed is best shown by the fact that when that great 
question of jury right arose in the neighboring colony of New 
York where the judges who were then under the power of re- 
call by the king sought to control free speech by holding that 
a crown-chosen judge but not the jury could pass on the libel- 
lous character of publications aimed at the sovereignty on 
which the judge's tenure depended, it was to Pennsylvania the 
lovers of liberty turned for help, and in response to that Mace- 
donian cry, our liberty taught colony sent from the atmosphere 
of freedom Andrew Hamilton who in that case established the 
great principle that a jury could pass on the character of the 
libel. 

In this stimulating field of Penn the apprentice boy found 
kindred spirits and in it he ripened to early and rich fruitage. 
His versatility was remarkable and in every sphere his suc- 
cess was as marked as it was rapid. In this broadened envi- 
ronment he was constrained to broaden and in turn he helped 
to broaden it. Coupled with a speculative mind was an in- 
tense common sense that led him by his industry, his thrift 



12 A Recall of Benjamin FranTclin. 

and his foresight to gather at a very early age a fortune for 
those days, but when he had gathered it, with a breadth of 
view that affords an envied model to many a man who has 
made his whole life subservient to money getting, Franklin, 
with a philosophic resolve to make money his servant instead 
of his master, withdrew from active business life and gave 
himself to his colony, his country and his fellow men. Hav- 
ing gained a living from his country, he turned to living for 
that country. Through Poor Richard's wise sayings, his alma- 
nac and other writings Franklin became the greatest human 
teacher the world has probably ever known in the people's in- 
dustry, in leading them to hardheaded common sense in the 
commonplace walks of everyday practical life. He was the 
first American writer whose works were widely circulated 
abroad. Indeed, in their time they were more widely read 
than any book save the Bible. His scientific research covered 
every field, electricity, ocean phenomena, medicine, chemistry, 
heat and cold. His great mind seemed to grasp all spheres of 
human knowledge. The other day I was surprised to find 
that he was the first intelligent observer and writer about the 
Gulf Stream and indeed that he actually gave the Gulf Stream 
its name. I was equally amazed to read letters of his in which 
he prophetically brought before the medical profession the 
value of open air in the treatment of disease. Indeed, 
the open air treatment of tuberculosis and many other prac- 
tical benefits are all clearly outlined in Franklin's writings. 
That it has taken a great profession more than a century 
to realize the truth of what the layman Franklin told them 
in plain words shows the prophetic type of his great mind. 
He lived not only in his own time but a century beyond it. 
He was the father of modern electricity, and we who think 
of him only as observing the phenomena of electricity 
through his kite lose sight of the intensely practical nature 
of the man. The lightning rod was his practical sugges- 
tion for protection from lightning and I find him speaking in 
one of his letters of " An old religionist whom I had relieved 
in a paralytic case by electricity, and who being afraid I 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 13 

should grow proud upon it sent me his serious though rather 
impertinent caution." The scientific study of heat and his 
practical bent of mind led him to invent the widely used 
Franklin stove and to devise a form of chimney that came 
into general use, but in these as in the copywriting of his 
books, Franklin refused to avail himself of any personal pro- 
tection or gain. His public life and private practice rang true 
to his motto that " the highest form of worship is service to 
man.'' He started the first public library in Philadelphia. "j . 

He was instrumental in founding in that city the academy jKj^ 

from which the University of Pennsylvania grew, just as «;v.'\/'^>^ 
later he came to Lancaster and helped lay the cornerstone of '^a^ 
this college which bears his name. He organized the first anti- 
slavery society in the world and as its president, and fittingly 
in this colony of freedom where the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, the Constitution, and the flag had their birthplace, he 
wrote and signed the first petition ever presented to Congress 
for the abolition of slavery, l^either slavery of mind or 
slavery of body found lodgment in Franklin's brain or heart. 
During all this time he took an active part in public service. 
He was not of that type of men who become public men be- 
cause they make themselves public. The simple fact was that 
when anything of a public nature was to be done the public 
demand was for Franklin's leadership, moderation, common 
sense and ability. His leadership was not of the self-sought 
or self-announced type. It was a leadership that came from 
the conviction of the people that he was fitted and needed to 
lead. Like Moses and Luther, like Washington and Lincoln, 
like every great leader that is truly great, he distrusted his 
ability to lead. His call came from the nation and not from 
himself. He was one of the great founders of our mail service 
and his far-seeing mind caught the benefits of a wider ex- 
change of environment and social intercourse as a uniting 
factor among the colonies. His swarthy forbear, the English 
smith at the cross-roads, had engraven that in his nature. He 
attended the meetings of delegates from other colonies and his 



14 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

wise counsels contributed greatly to furthering the common 
interest in matters of common concern. He took strong 
grounds on the uniting of the colonies for their protection on 
the frontier in the French and Indian wars. In the Brad- 
dock campaign his services were invaluable in the practical 
and vital point of securing wagon trains through his influence 
with the Pennsylvania farmers. His interest in that cam- 
paign, and the same remark may be made of Washington, 
showed that these two great far-seeing minds, representing as 
they did the two great far-seeing commonwealths of Virginia 
and Pennsylvania behind them — the two commonwealths that 
won the gateway to the west and in the gaining of the west 
laid the real foundation of American extension — Franklin 
and Washington both realized as few men did that the great 
future of America lay in the Mississippi Basin. In a pro- 
phetic letter to Lord Kames, which I have referred to before 
in speaking of the taking of that country and Canada from 
the French, Franklin said: "I am therefore by no means for 
restoring Canada. If we keep it all the country from the St. 
Lawrence to the Mississippi will in another century be filled 
with British people. Britain itself will become vastly more 
populous by the immense increase of its commerce. The At- 
lantic sea will be covered with her trading vessels and your 
naval power thence continually increasing will extend your 
influence around the whole world." At a later day and in the 
midst of the Revolution, when the American Congress by a 
vote to which there were only three recorded votes in the nega- 
tive advised that John Jay agree to a treaty with Spain by 
which the mouth of the Mississippi should be forever closed 
as a free gateway to the sea, Franklin summed up the contro- 
versy in a nut shell of homely common sense — " Poor as we 
are, yet as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with 
them to buy at a great price the whole of their (Spain's) right 
on the Mississippi, than sell a drop of its waters. A neighbor 
might as well ask me to sell my street door." In truth, his 
mind, reaching so far into the future, had so grasped the 



A Recall of Benjamin FranHin. 15 

possibilities of the west, and he had become so imbued through 
Braddock's mistakes of Britain's inability to effect its win- 
ning, that he became convinced the colonies must win it them- 
selves. We accordingly find that his first public mission 
abroad was to England in 1757 and its purpose was to secure 
the taxation of Penn's proprietary lands in order to give Penn- 
sylvania the means to carry on the French and Indian War. 
From this time on Franklin spent the gi'eater part of his time 
in Europe and away from his family. It was a sacrifice of 
private life to public duty, and at the close of his life Frank- 
lin said, as many another man can who has given himself 
to public service, " They engrossed the prime of my life, they 
have eaten my flesh and seem resolved now to pick my bones." 
From 1762 to 1767 he lived continuously in England trying 
to secure a repeal of laws that were obnoxious to the colonies 
and later his duty forced him to spend from 1776 to 1785 
in France, where he succeeded in effecting an alliance with 
that country whereby he obtained the French troops and the 
French money that, coupled with the financing of Morris, 
enabled Washington to fight the Revolution. After Washing- 
ton and Rochambeau had compelled the surrender of Corn- 
wallis, Franklin remained two years in Paris and largely as 
the result of his work the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, 
which was the verdict and judgment of the Revolution. By 
it Franklin secured not only the independence of the thirteen 
colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, but he gained what was 
equally important, a surrender from England of the Missis- 
sippi Basin as far west as the Father of Waters — a diplo- 
matic territorial victory on which, through the gain of the 
Mississippi Valley, the future greatness of the American na- 
tion then depended and now rests. 

This hurried sketch gives us the principal facts in Frank- 
lin's life and from it we pass to a necessarily brief considera- 
tion of the effect of these things on the make-up of the man. 
His life naturally divides itself into three periods: first, the 
pre-Revolutionary, or formative one; second, the Revolution- 



16 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

arj, or effective period; and third, the post-Revolutionary, or 
reflective period. 

Turning first to the pre-Revolutionarj period of Franklin's 
life what strikes one especially is Franklin's essentially Brit- 
ish make-up at that time. A Briton, but a Briton modified 
by colonial environment. He was, as we noted above, the 
prototype of that great army of British colonists who, under 
a wiser motherhood than Britain gave to Franklin, are to-day 
making Canada, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India 
what they are, and who in turn in the reflex of colonial spirit 
are doing so much to mould and make England herself; for 
the English colonies are in truth to-day wielding a greater 
influence on England than she is on them. For mark you, the 
great tide of English emigration to her colonies is to-day as 
then but the race acknowledgment that in the problems of 
life's betterment and opportunity, the colony gives more prom- 
ise of the answer to ideals than does the motherland. This 
same relation, that of a colonist convinced that the land for 
him was the colony, but recognizing still his devotion to the 
motherland and reverence for her institutions, was Franklin's 
state of mind during the pre-Revolutionary period. But the 
England of that day had not yet learned the lesson she had to 
learn later through the loss of her oldest colonial child. To 
Franklin, the loyal British colonist, came the quiet, unrecog- 
nized but insistent call of his new world country for self gov- 
ernment. Had England heeded that call from men like Frank- 
lin and Washington, had it even given an answering echo to 
their calls, the colonial agitators of that day might have agi- 
tated in vain and separation from England been postponed 
for a generation. The Franklins, the Washingtons and the 
Marshalls might have died loyal colonists and the work of the 
Revolution been left to the Websters, the Jacksons and the 
Calhouns of the next generation. But destiny had filled its 
time. A headstrong ruler, a foolish cabinet, a failure of the 
old world to recognize the signs of the times in the new, drove 
with the irresistible logic of events the British colonist Frank- 



A Recall of Benjamin Franldin. 17 

lin out of his pre-Revolutionarj period into becoming a na- 
tion founder in the next. The stern logic of events was driv- 
ing Franklin — for he came to separation slowly and unwill- 
ingly — from his birthright as a British colonial, and he was 
forced to become the first great American whom the new world 
gave to the old. For the truth is that Franklin was meant for 
the universe. In the economy of humanity he belonged to the 
world and to humanity in its fullest and freest expression. 
It has well been said: "Benjamin Franklin was the first 
American born on this side of the water who was meant for 
the universe. His mere existence was a sort of omen. It was 
impossible to suppose that a people who could produce a man 
of that scope and intellect could long remain in a condition of 
political dependence. It would have been preposterous to have 
had Franklin die a colonist and go down to posterity, not as 
an American, but as a colonial Englishman. He was a 
microcosm of the coming nation of the United States." And 
so, by the silent march of the nation, which only the thought- 
ful see, and for which only the thoughtful prepare, the great 
onward march of events carried Franklin out of the colonial 
pre-Eevolutionary stage of his life into the area of his middle 
life, the Revolutionary or effective period. And how effective ? 
He is the only American whose name is signed to those three 
great instruments, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty 
of Paris and the Constitution. By the first he helped save 
democracy from autocracy. By the second he helped make 
the title of democracy to democracy more absolute. By the 
third he sought to save democracy from itself. 

The three men who, to my mind, were the bed-rock creators 
of American independence were George Washington, Benja- 
min Franklin, who, as noted, laid the corner-stone of this col- 
lege, and Robert Morris, who was one of its first board of 
trustees. Without the work of each of these three men in their 
several spheres, no one of the others could have made inde- 
pendence a reality. Washington at the head of the army; 
Morris repleting the scant war-chest on which the army lived ; 



18 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

and Franklin bringing bands across tbe sea in Frencb alliance, 
Frencb gold and Frencb armies — tbese were tbe figbting and 
sustaining factors on wbicb independence was secured. Tbe 
Adamses, tbe Patrick Henrys, tbe Jobn Hancocks, witb tbeir 
courageous agitation, were tbe men wbo made America inde- 
pendent on paper; but Morris, Franklin and Wasbington were 
men wbo made tbe independence on paper independence in 
fact. It was all well enougb to refer to tbe imaginary " tbree 
millions of people armed in tbe boly cause of liberty," but 
tbis pbrase was but a sounding brass and timkling cymbal. 
Tbe scant tbree tbousand wbo sbivered around tbe buts up 
yonder on tbe Pennsylvania bills of Valley Forge knew tbe 
tbree millions armed in tbe boly cause only netted about tbree 
tbousand, and Franklin felt it necessary to get tbe places of 
some of tbe tbree million supplied by Rocbambeau and bis 
tbousands of Frencbmen, wbo later sbared witb Wasbington 
tbe glory and credit of tbe actual results at Yorktown. Tbe 
berculean efforts of Morris were required to feed and clotbe 
an army witb money tbat was so wortbless tbat to-day we un- 
consciously revere bis unrequited services wben we speak of a 
tbing as not wortb a continental. But tbese tbree, Wasbing- 
ton at tbe camp fire; Franklin at tbe council table; and 
Morris at tbe war cbest— made up tbat on wbicb all wars are 
successfully waged, courageous figbting, wise financijig and 
diplomatic diplomacy, and tbe connection of two of tbese great 
men witb tbis college makes a reference to tbeir great service 
timely. And in tbat connection I cannot forbear saying tbat 
I trust tbe day will come wben in front of Independence 
Square, and on tbe side of Wasbington's statute, will be placed 
a fitting recognition of Robert Morris, wbo so loyally and un- 
selfisbly strove to make Wasbington's work possible. 

In tbe post-Revolutionary era of Franklin's life came bis 
supreme work in belping to make tbe Constitution. He bad 
signed tbe Declaration of Independence, wbicb bad called self- 
government into existence. He bad signed tbe Treaty of 
Paris wbicb gave self-government a place of babitation and be 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 19 

had signed the Constitution, which he and those who labored 
with him thought was the best way of insuring that self gov- 
ernment should not perish from the earth. 

The world's history is a series of the swings of the pendulum 
to different fields of thought. Between the limits of those 
swings in the pendulum's path lie those ranges that mark a 
nation's changed view point. One hundred and twenty-five 
years ago Washington and Franklin and the fathers who had 
freed themselves from monarchical government control found 
themselves confronted by the problem of creating a new form 
of government. They went about it slowly, deliberately, 
thoughtfully, and as you will see from Franklin's life, prayer- 
fully. They realized that there were some inherent weaknesses 
in a pure democracy that had in the end destroyed Greece and 
Rome. For these reasons they distrusted the principle of an 
entire nation governing itself without representatives. On the 
other hand, they saw the inherent weakness of monarchy was 
the arbitrary and selfish government of an absolute ruler like 
George III. To avoid these two extremes they determined to 
form a constitution and make it their chart. The significance 
of the constitution as the real foundation of the new country 
was at once recognized and liberty loving people everywhere 
felt that a new era had come into the field of national govern- 
ment in a constitutional government. That constitution has 
proved the model from which liberty loving peoples every- 
where have drawn inspiration and forms of government. 
When the South American republics were to be builded ; when 
South Africa was to be federalized — it was to the constitution 
of the United States both countries turned for a model. Its 
principles are interwoven in the systems of the great English 
colonies and in its struggles for what are best for government 
in the new world, China, the oldest nation of the old world, 
reached out and found guidance in the chart that Franklin 
had helped draw and Lincoln helped save. And we have to- 
day the novel situation that when, after one hundred and 
twenty-five years of trial of constitutional government, some 



2^ A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

of our people are becoming distrustful of it, the oldest and 
wisest nation of all, to wit, the Chinese, after trying every- 
thing else for some four thousand years, has come to the con- 
clusion our Constitution is the best form and they are model- 
ling from it. It remains for time to determine whether the 
American experience of a century, or the Chinese of forty, shall 
prove the wiser. During the century and more that followed 
the making of the Constitution our country has grown great 
under it. It has proven the one thing around which the men 
of the north rallied to save the Union and recalling that con- 
stitution the men of the south were content to come back into 
the Union, feeling that was the one thing above all others to 
protect them after their return, for the south had but to recall 
Lincoln's assurance to them in his first inaugural that " all the 
vital rights of minorities and of individuals are assured to 
them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibi- 
tions in the Constitution." For a century the pendulum of 
constitutional regard swung to the limit of reverence for that 
sublime document which had made and preserved us a nation. 
It had proved itself to be the holy writ of self-government and 
it had proved so because it based self-government on govern- 
ment of self. But we have come upon a time when the pendu- 
lum has swung to the other side. The popular thought to-day 
seems to be that constitutions are hindrances instead of helps 
to governments, that instead of securing liberty they are deny- 
ing it. But in spite of these changes in constitutional regard, 
let us remember, my friends, that though the pendulum 
swings the old clock does not. The figTires on its face still bear 
true witness to the unchanging law of time. And as there are 
certain truths in science that no change of opinion can alter, 
so there are certain elements in human nature — and govern- 
ment is simply human nature applied on a large scale — which 
are unchangeably fixed. And of all unchanging things the 
most changeless thing in human nature is self. And self and 
its selfishness are only aggravated when the selfishness of indi- 
viduals becomes the accumulated force of the selfishness of a 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 21 

nation. Let us stop for a moment and ask ourselves what is 
true self-government by a people. It is not alone the right of 
a people to be self-governed, but it is the duty also of a people 
to govern itself, for true self-government is after all govern- 
ment of self by self. The self must not only govern but it 
must be v^illing to be governed, and this being so it follows that 
true self-government by a nation is nothing more and nothing 
less than the principle of self-government in the individual 
life collectively applied to self-government by a nation. Do T 
make that clear ? Let me illustrate. The proof of a really 
great man's strength of character is his willingness and abil- 
ity to protect himself against his own selfishness. To do this 
the greater and stronger a man is, the more carefully and 
thoroughly does he place limits on himself and lay down for 
his own conduct in life certain limitations, physical, moral 
and mental. These self-imposed limitations are the Rubicons 
across which he can only go at the sacrifice of his real man- 
hood. ISTow our fathers knew how they as colonists had suf- 
fered from the rulers bound by no constitutional limitations. 
They knew from painful experience that the power to exer- 
cise power will breed abuse of power, unless in some way re- 
strained. They knew that men in the aggregate would in form- 
ing a nation at times become just as selfish and unjust as the 
unlimited individual monarch would become. They realized 
that selfishness was so deep-grained in all men that unless 
limited it would show itself in men collectively as well as 
singly. That this was true in a single man who was called a 
king or in a collection of men, who were all rulers or kings, 
which was a pure democracy. And recognizing this danger 
in a single man, which they had seen in England, and knowing 
it existed in collections of men, which they had seen in the 
downfall of Greece and Rome, they reasoned thus : We are 
considering the experiment of a nation being its own ruler 
and to do so we must arrange for a ruler of some kind. So 
while in reality and truth this is a government of the whole 
people, yet as all men comprising the whole people will not 



22 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

likely agree on all things, we will establish the principle of a 
majority rule, namely, we will agree that for the time being 
a majority shall be the ruler of the nation; but inasmuch as 
the minority, who are not the rulers of the nation, must be 
protected, for they are a part of the people, and inasmuch as 
those who are in the majority may in time grow selfish and do 
wrong to the helpless minority, we will, following that reason- 
able course which commends itself to us as individuals, pro- 
tect our minority selves from our self-governing majority by 
this constitutional chart, which so long as we continue it shall 
bind and limit that majority of ourselves so that it cannot 
wrong the minority of ourselves. They said that if England 
had had a constitution and King George had been limited 
thereby he would not have done those things which in our 
declaration we charge him with doing and which caused this 
revolution, viz., violation of our rights of person and property; 
taxation without representation; and to quote other words of 
the Declaration of Independence, and which it will surprise 
many of us to know was one of the causes of the Revolution, 
namely, that the judges of that day were subject to the recall 
of the king or to use the words of our Declaration, King 
George would not have " made judges dependent on his will 
alone for the tenure of their office." When, then, our fathers 
proposed by a constitution to put certain limitations upon 
themselves were they unpatriotic and undemocratic? When 
Franklin and those with him who had won freedom through 
much tribulation and with a hangman's rope around their 
necks if they failed, were they despising that freedom, when 
as free men they in effect said — We are now so free that we 
can afford to surrender some of our freedom for the common 
good. Is a stream restrained of its freedom if in its course a 
dam be built and its confined waters made to serve some use- 
ful purpose? Is a man who fences his field any the less en- 
joying his own because the fence which keeps his neighbor's 
cattle out also keeps his own within proj)er bounds ? Were 
these wise men like Franklin not applying to their govern- 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 23 

ment what you and I, if we are following Franklin's example, 
are doing every day in our own lives ? Are you doing to-day 
whatever you have power to do ? or are you voluntarily placing 
upon yourself limitations and restrictions which you observe 
in all your intercourse with your fellows? The old truth is 
equally true of men and of nations, that no man liveth unto 
himself and no nation, or the majority of no nation, lives of 
and for itself alone. This civilization of ours, the business 
life of a community, the happiness of family life — all would 
drift into unworkable confusion if each of us did not volun- 
tarily place upon himself limitations which we will not pass 
although we have the power to pass them. And if this deep 
ingrained principle of self-imposed limitation is the true safe- 
guard of individual life when and at what point, tell me, can 
that principle be safely abandoned when self-controlled indi- 
viduals unite themselves in a self-controlled government ? If 
for any one man to revoke and recall the self-imposed limita- 
tions of his own life is to undermine the foundation stones of 
his individual character, when does the undermining process 
of the character of the nation disappear when a hundred mil- 
lions of people, associated in the form of government, revoke 
and recall their self-imposed national limitations ? ISTo, no ; 
the safety of the individual man lies in a self-controlled indi- 
vidualism, no more and no less than the safety of a self-gov- 
erning people rests on constitutionally established self-control. 
And in so holding we make no fetish of constitutions. They 
are not laws of the Medes and Persians for which there is no 
change, for a constitution wisely makes provision for its own 
change, but mark you, in a constitutional way. This consti- 
tutional power of constitutional change has been and always 
will be exercised. The closed door of our federal constitution 
has already opened fifteen times to welcome fifteen different 
amendments during its history. The state of Pennsylvania 
has had four different constitutions since the colonial times. 
The great state of Ohio is now changing hers, and already 
possessing this salutary power of change and amendment when 



24 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

changed conditions demand them, and provided with a method 
of change that involves deliberation, argument, patience and 
forbearance, can we regard as necessary any other method of 
constitutional change ? Indeed, my friends, I cannot help but 
feel we are all getting unduly stirred up, if not a trifle hyster- 
ical on this question of constitutional restriction as applied to 
the question of the constitutionality of laws. An impression 
has been fostered that every helpful law in some way runs the 
risk of being declared unconstitutional. The mischiefs in 
that respect are not as bad as we imagine. To illustrate I ven- 
ture the thought that the United States to-day is the most law- 
burdened nation on the globe. As soon as a man is elected to 
a legislative body, he feels it his solemn duty to propose and 
have some new laws passed. I presume there are in force in 
the forty-odd states of the union to-day more than 150,000 
laws. That means an average of about 3,000 to each state, 
with the Acts of Congress not included. This estimate is 
moderate, for I find that in the state of Pennsylvania alone 
the legislature of last year added 466 laws to the ones we 
already had. These 150,000 laws stand on our statute books 
to-day as enforcible constitutional measures, more in number, 
I venture to suggest, than the laws of all Europe combined, 
and when some one is somplaining to us about constitutions 
and their injustice in thwarting legislation, let us ask that 
person to tell us how many of the 150,000 laws have been held 
unconstitutional, and if he knows anything about the facts he 
will find the percentage of acts stricken down as unconstitu- 
tional on the far side of the decimal point. You will pardon 
me for injecting this personal testimony, but I presume it is a 
fair example of the practical experience of many brother 
judges. In the twenty years of my judicial life the consti- 
tutionality of many laws, state and federal, has been raised 
before me, but I have never once enjoyed that pleasure which 
courts are popularly supposed to glory in, namely, of holding 
a law was unconstitutional. It is true, that here and there iii 
the thousands of courts and judges our country has, there have 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 26 

l)een and there will be unwise, mistaken decisions, and sucli 
will continue to be the case so long as to err is human. It is 
possible that the changed economical, commercial and social 
conditions of modern life have not been duly appreciated by 
all judges and that there are men on the bench to-day whose 
mental vision is not of the breadth that we would desire it, 
but it is equally true that there are only the same differences 
of temperament and viewpoint on the bench that there are 
among physicians and clergymen and all branches of pro- 
fessional men. But in all these professions, the mistakes that 
are made, the faults of physicians and clergymen, and teach- 
ers and judges, will be found to be more often the fault of the 
particular man who applies, or thinks he applies, the law, the 
gospel, the text-book, the medicine, rather than the fault of the 
law, the gospel, or the medical systems themselves. Mistakes 
in regard to the constitution ! Why a man's own constitution 
is a settled thing, but whether that man's constitution shall 
have the breath of life breathed into it by one physician, who 
will save the man's life, or whether that constitution will go 
to the grave under another physician, is not a purely consti- 
tutional question, but its solution depends on the wisdom of 
the man in selecting his own physician who is to handle his 
constitution. But because some physicians have not been skil- 
ful and some judges have not been wise, in dealing with con- 
stitutions, let us not permit the unskilfulness of the one or the 
unwisdom of the other to unwisely lead us to give up our con- 
stitutions, physical or governmental, entirely, or to overlook 
the fact that the vast majority of doctors heal and the vast 
majority of judges help men to the enjoyment and security 
of life, liberty and happiness. And just as there are men 
called to the ministry who have been called in a whisper, we 
will find men in judicial work who have been called to that 
work in an equally low voice, and I venture the thought that 
if the care in the original call were greater and more pro- 
nounced, the less we would hear of the necessity of subsequent 
recall, for after all, the belated recall is but a confession of the 



26 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

earlier mistake in the call. And this leads me to a word of 
cheerful optimism to you college men who are entering on life. 
Take with you the cheery spirit of cheery optimism that will re- 
fuse to be led into gloomy pessimism by the wrong-doing of the 
few. Remember, my dear young friends, that the great mass of 
your fellow men and fellow women are as honest and as square 
as you, and if you stand and act on that platform you can rest 
assured your neighbors are about as good as you. When old 
Elijah's pessimistic eyes were opened he found there were 
many thousand of his unsuspected countrymen whose knees 
were as stiff as his when it came to bowing to Baal. And just 
remember too that just as these seven thousand had probably 
said nothing about their virtue because Elijah had not heard 
of them, so now there is a reserve force of unheralded virtue 
and righteousness in this country of yours that you never sus- 
pect until it vents itself in acts. That unwritten law, unpub- 
lished in statutes, but graven on the hearts of American men, 
"women and children first," gave this country in the case of 
the " Titanic," an insight into the unheralded moral qualities 
of our people that, like deep rivers, flow quiet and strong 
through the nation's life. No, no ; we must not conclude that 
everything is going to the bad because a few individual men 
and women do so and their shortcomings are heralded all over 
the land. I often think as I read of the wrongdoing here and 
there all over the country with which the columns of our 
papers are largely taken up of what an infinitesimal part of 
the nation's life they evidence. Eor one cashier who violates 
his trust and becomes a defaulter, I can point you to thousands 
of cashiers over the country who to-day command the respect 
and esteem of their fellow men and are more faithfully 
watching and safeguarding funds of others than they are their 
own. For one woman who has strayed from the path of virtue 
and whose sin fills the morbid columns of papers devoted to 
that side of life in some scandalous divorce proceeding I can, 
thank God, point you to millions of homes in this country 
where quiet women are true to the teachings of childhood, to 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin, 27 

the loyalty to husband, to the motherhood of the family. For 
one poor fellow in a gray suit who had yielded to temptation and 
pilfered your mail and whose derelictions have been made the 
subject of a sensational article I can point you to thousands 
upon thousands of his fellow carriers who, in every city and 
hamlet in this country, are incessantly doing their daily, un- 
heralded, unpublished duty. For one exceptional case that is 
delayed in our courts, for one suit where, through the stern re- 
quirements of the low, the miscarriage of a jury, or the lack of 
knowledge of the judge, an injustice has been done and widely 
commented upon with a view to undermining the confidence 
in the administration of justice I can point out to you thou- 
sands upon thousands of cases where law, jury and judge have 
worked even and exact justice, no account of which ever enters 
into the story you read in the public print, and for one man 
on the bench whose actions have been such as to call forth 
public criticism I can point to, from one end of this land to 
the other, thousands and thousands of just judges whose lives 
have been as pure and just as they have been quiet and un- 
heralded in the public print. The truth is that only the ex- 
ceptional, only the abnormal ever finds the light of publicity. 
Error, sin, wrong-doing are what interest us, and we pay no 
attention to the quiet routine and daily duty faithfully per- 
formed. I have often felt that if a paper and magazine ig- 
nored the mistakes of men and simply recorded the quiet doing 
of duty in life it could not exist for no one would care to 
read it. So my young college friends, in summing up the true 
significance of the sensationalism of the day, do not in your 
enthusiasm overlook the overwhelming mass of virtue, up- 
rightness, integrity, in the life and work of the uncounted 
majority of our own people. The truth is that the great mass 
of people want to do right and that those who deliberately 
do wrong, either in public or private affairs, are in a small 
minority. And in all these matters the great need of recall 
is for us — each one of us — to recall ourselves to the higher 
plane of life and to remember that the streets of Damascus 



28 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

were kept clean because every man in Damascus cleaned the 
street in front of his own home. 

But to recall myself to the subject in hand — full of years, 
honored as no man has ever been honored before by the world 
in such varied fields, recognized as a man universally wise, 
touching the varied fields of literature, statesmanship, science, 
education and practically every phase of human life, Frank- 
lin came through it all the same modest, simple minded, great 
man he had been all his life. With a head as clear as a sage's 
he retained a heart as simple as a child's. A man of strong 
views himself, one who would naturally call forth strong oppo- 
sition to his views, he had no personal enemies in public or 
private life. He possessed that wonderful poise of fairness 
and justice that lifted him out of the plane of personal antag- 
onism. In writing John Jay he said : " I have, as you observe, 
some enemies in England, but they are my enemies as an 
American, I have also two or three in America, who are my 
enemies as a minister, but I thank God there are not in the 
whole world any who are my enemies as a man, for by His 
grace through a long life I have been enabled so to conduct 
myself that there does not exist a human being who can justly 
say ' Ben Franklin has wronged me,' " He had that wonder- 
ful faculty which Lincoln possessed of always stating his ad- 
versary's case so fairly and his own so strongly that any sense 
of personal antagonism disappeared in the atmosphere of his 
earnest effort to reach the truth. Like Lincoln, too, he had 
that keen sense of humor which both used with kindness of 
heart, but with merciless logic, to illustrate and puncture the 
false reasoning of those opposed to them. Indeed, it is said 
that to Franklin, instead of Jefferson, would have been en- 
trusted the writing of the Declaration of Independence but 
his colleagues feared he would inject some of his humor 
into it. 

There is another thought in connection with the forming 
of that constitution that we do well to bear in mind in con- 
nection with Franklin. In these present days when men seem 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 29 

to be groping for new things in government, when the self-suffi- 
ciency of each man essays to solve every governmental ques- 
tion from the standpoint of individual selfishness and to dog- 
matically put forward his views as the only views, it does us 
all good to recall that splendid picture of the venerable and 
beloved Franklin then over eighty years of age, rising in his 
place in the convention that was then forming the Constitu- 
tion. In convincing words he told his colleagues that for 
weeks they had been unable to agree on anything; that they 
had been blindly groping about examining all forms of gov- 
ernment and liking none. In convincing words he reminded 
them that in the beginning of their struggle with Britain that 
they had had daily prayers in that room for divine protection ; 
that their prayers had been answered and he added : ''' All of 
us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed fre- 
quent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor." 
And then turning to them, this great man, against whom the 
cry of irreligious was often raised, said : " And have we now 
forgotten that powerful friend ? Or do we imagine we no 
longer need his assistance ? I have lived, sir, a long time ; 
and the longer I live the more convincing proof I see of this 
truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And, if a 
sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it 
probable that an empire can rise without his aid ? We have 
been assured, sir, in the sacred writing, that, ' Except the Lord 
build the house they labor in vain that built it.' I firmly be- 
lieve this and I also believe that without his concurring aid, 
we shall succeed in this political building no better than the 
builders of Babel." In the history of government building I 
know no picture so sublime, no words so eloquent, as those in 
which the wisest man of his day and generation moved the 
makers of the Constitution to implore God's wisdom and guid- 
ance before all other business at the opening of each day's 
work, unless it be those great words of Lincoln, as on that 
February morning, when he left his Springfield neighbors on 
his mission to prayerfully save the Constitution which Frank- 



30 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

lin had prayerfully founded : " I now leave you not knowing 
when or whether ever I may return, with a task upon me 
greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without 
the assistance of that divine being who ever attended him I 
cannot succeed; with that assistance I cannot fail," As we 
look back on these men, who made and saved out Constitution, 
Washington on his knees in the thickets of Valley Forge, 
Franklin moving for daily prayers in Independence Hall and 
Lincoln invoking the guidance of Washington's God, may not 
the thoughtful, prayerful hearts of the nation voice the peti- 
tion that every hand that seeks to change a constitution made 
under God's guidance will as reverently seek that same guid- 
ance in changing "what God hath wrought." 

And there is another great principle for which Franklin 
and the men of his day contended, which I think can well be 
made the subject of a thoughtful recall. That was the prin- 
ciple of representative government. I^o purer or more de- 
voted friend of the people has ever lived in American history 
than Benjamin Franklin. No man was closer to his fellow 
men than he. His democracy was unquestioned and he re- 
tained his simplicity, his humanity and his neighborliness 
wherever he was. But with all these there was no man who 
believed more firmly in a representative system of govern- 
ment than he. Let us think who it was that gave us our inde- 
pendence, our Constitution, our country. There were three 
millions of people in the United States in those days, but the 
great mass of them were too busy, too much engrossed in their 
own affairs to join in the winning of a new world from Eng- 
land, and of creating a new government. We are accustomed 
to think of our whole peojale of that day as taking part in the 
Revolution. Such was not the case. Those three million of 
people were wise enough in their day and generation to stick 
to the representative principle and that representation was 
confined to such small numbers that it finally dwindled to a 
representative Continental Congress and to George Washing- 
ton and the few thousand men at Valley Forge. It was in 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 31 

the latter representative body on those bleak hills, that Wash- 
ington in the bitterness of his soul learned that the government 
must be created on the representative principle and that John 
Marshall, who came to Valley Forge a Virginian and left it 
an American, learned those great principles of a representa- 
tive government that gave the Constitution vitality, a vitality 
that has been based on one hundred years of use of the repre- 
sentative system. We do v^^ell to recall that it was men who 
believed in a representative form of government who gave us 
our country, who gave us our Constitution, who saved our 
country from disunion through the Constitution, and who have 
made this country under the Constitution a mighty people. 
Let us remember that the government " of the people, by the 
people and for the people " for which Lincoln pled was the 
constitutional government " four score and seven years ago 
our fathers brought forth upon this continent." And let those 
who would change the representative form of our government 
take heed to the warning Webster gave at the laying of the 
corner stone of the monument on Bunker Hill : " We are 
placed at the head of the system of representative and popular 
government. If in our case the representative system ulti- 
mately fail, popular government must be pronounced impos- 
sible." The principle of the representative system is not 
based on aristocracy or on a governing class, but on the simple, 
sound, common sense principle that the people select repre- 
sentatives in directors who in turn select school teachers to 
teach their children; synods and conventions and representa- 
tive men or bodies, who in turn elect and ordain clergymen to 
instruct them in matters religious ; schools, examining boards 
and other representative bodies, who shall qualify physicians 
for medicine, plumbers for plumbing, lawyers for law, and so 
on throughout all the occupations of life. It is the principle 
on which every church is run to-day by selecting vestries, 
elders, deacons and other bodies who, in a representative ca- 
pacity, select other representatives to do the work of the con- 
gregation. It is the principle in every bank by which the 



32 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

stockholders select directors, who in turn select president, 
cashier and those who do its executive work. This Constitu- 
tion of ours was based on the theory of a wise use in certain 
ways of the direct power of the people and a wise use in others 
of the judgment and discretion of representative officials to 
carry out portions of the work. They believed that the repre- 
sentative system fixed responsibility on those chosen and that 
the obligation of responsibility was created, fostered and 
stimulated by making men their representatives. They ob- 
served in their own every day life that indifferently good men 
were turned into strong men by having the responsibility of 
fatherhood put upon them. They said that a man who waS 
put to do a job was more likely to find some way of doing it 
than a man who was simply saying how it ought to be done 
but without doing it. They believed that what was left as 
anybody's business generally ended up in being nobody's duty. 
In fact, they believed that government was like everything 
else — it would not work itself, and that either all the people 
had to do all the work or else they had to select some repre- 
sentatives to do it for them. They felt that the true principle 
was to select representatives and then sternly look to them for 
results. And wherever all the people have acted on this whole- 
some principle, not the mere selection of representatives, but 
the stern holding by the people of the people's representatives 
responsible for results, representative government had been 
and will be a government of the people. The success of gov- 
ernment depends not on the wiping out of representatives, but 
in that vigilant interest of the people in seeing the people's 
representatives do their duty. And if the interest of the 
people is so lax that it will not compel its representatives to do 
their duty, will that lax interest be effective enough to see that 
any other form of government is effective ? Eternal vigilance 
is not only the price of liberty, but' the price of liberty's gov- 
ernment by the people. It seems to me that when we are ready 
to eliminate representatives in other lines of work, the clergy 
in morals, the physician in medicine, the teacher in learning 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 33 

— then and not until then — are we ready to give up the repre- 
sentative principle in government. We are departing from 
these principles to-day. Going away from what Franklin and 
the fathers thought was wise, into the untried fields of direct 
voting, direct primaries, direct work of every kind by the 
people. Are we sure where we shall end by these changes ? I 
recall very well the man who was a by-word in my boyhood — 
all of whose troubles came through a new fender he bought for 
his home. It is a homely story but it carries a lesson. Etwas 
bought this fender, but when he placed it in front of his fire- 
place the mantel did not seem right, and so the mantel was 
changed and that brought a change in the wainscoting and the 
change in that room went into the hall and finally the whole 
house had to be changed and Etwas's house ended up in a 
sheriff's sale. We are tinkering with these changes and one 
change is the father of unexpected other changes. I think 
there is nothing that has happened in our national life that has 
so distressed the minds of thoughtful Americans as the per- 
sonal conflict into which our only two living holders of our 
highest office have been drawn during the last few months. 
The partisans of each have blamed the other for this unhappy 
occurrence. Has it ever occurred to you that neither of the 
two men can be justly charged with what we have already re- 
corded ? Has it occurred to you that no other president has 
been placed in this position and that the placing of these two 
men in it has been the result of the changes that are taking 
j)lace in our constitutional form of government ? When the 
people require that the principles of the old representative 
system of presidential nominations shall be done away with 
— a system by the way that in a hundred years gave us no 
president of whom the nation was ashamed — and that the men 
seeking the high office of president of the United States shall 
be forced on the hustings by the presidential primary, do we 
need any more signal and striking example of the unlooked 
for changes which change may bring to us without our 
wishing ? 



/ 



34 A Recall of Benjamin FranJclin. 

Moreover, by representation the true representative becomes 
impressed v^^ith the responsibility of not only representing the 
majority that chose him, but of the under-dog in the fight — 
the minority, whose representative he is, as a part of the 
people. And history proves not only the right of the minority 
to be protected, but the majority's need that a minority be pro- 
tected. There is no institution in the administration of 
justice to my mind of greater value than trial by jury. It is 
the tribunal of the people and in spite of its occasional miscar- 
riages the vast majority of its verdicts are right. But if a 
majority of seven were to settle its verdict, I would lose my 
faith in it for the enforced agreement of the other five is the 
leaven that enables it to work justice to all and malice to none. 
And a little reflection shows that minorities are often the 
people's safeguards, that time and experience are needed to 
indicate a minority's view, indeed, that those great words, 
" government of the people, by the people and for the people " 
had, in the mind of Lincoln, a meaning far deeper than the 
mere words convey. For, mark you, those words were used 
by him on a higher plane than a mere question of majority. 
He called his countrymen to "here highly resolve" and that 
''under God" government of the people, by the people and 
for the people should not perish. And what was this highly 
resolved purpose of Lincoln? His own experience tells the 
story, for Lincoln was a man not of majorities, but of minor- 
ities. There never was any more direct appeal to the judg- 
ment of the people than the great question which Abraham 
Lincoln submitted to the people of Illinois in his contest with 
Douglass. From one end of that state to another, with an ab- 
sence of all passion, with an appeal to reason, with every 
wealth of light and instruction and intense earnestness, Lin- 
coln presented the great issue of all ages to the people of Illi- 
nois for their determination. But when the votes came the 
great champion of human liberty found the majority, swept 
away by the prevailing spirit of the hour, was against him. 
He, too, for the time being was despised and rejected of men 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 35 

by a triumphant majority and Lincoln and his minority went 
down to defeat. But though the majority was against him, 
truth still remained unchanged, for the real question was not 
of men but of principle. And to Lincoln in his minority, as 
to many a man in the loneliness of isolated dissent, came that 
needed assurance that, " in such a controversy the majority 
principle has no legitimate place. Where the weapon is rea- 
son and not force, there is no magic in a multitude of suf- 
frages. Opinions are to be weighed, not numbered, and if 
they will not bear the test of reason, it is morally impossible 
that they stand as law." So, too, in the election of 1860, Lin- 
coln, while elected, represented but a mere minority. The 
combined votes of Douglass and Breckinridge, all of whom 
were against him, constituted a great majority of the nation. 
In the election of 1864, Lincoln was again the representative 
of a minority, for the principles he stood for would not then 
have commanded a support of a majority north and south, had 
all his countrymen voted. But who will say that Lincoln and 
his minority were wrong, and that Judge Douglass and his 
majority were right ? The Athenians had among their many 
statutes one dedicated to " time which vindicates," and of one 
of his noblest characters John Bunyan had only to say, " But 
Patience was willing to wait," Truly time and patience, and 
not the recklessness of majorities, are the guardians of minor- 
ity principles. 

And now a closing thought. Franklin lived through one of 
those great eras of flux and change — those days of radical 
transition, through which men and nations march or flounder in 
their onward progress His was a period of tremendous change. 
The science of government — for it is a science and as such 
worthy of the most thoughtful study — was slowly but irresist- 
ibly changing. The autocracy of place and birth and class 
were crumbling away and all the people were awakening to 
the possibilities of self-government. The absolutism of hered- 
ity, the dogmatism of religion, the selfishness of nations, were 
all being subjected to the scrutiny of a dawning patriotism 



36 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

and a growing conviction of individual right. The flames of 
genius burned high, the problems of the present were being 
illuminated by a thoughtful study of the past. And through 
the flame and fervor and fusing of awakening ardent brains 
came the birth and ordering of new conditions. It was a 
great time for new ideas and the call was for great men. 
These conditions existed in the old as well as in the new world. 
But how different the outcome. Germany, lacking any cen- 
tral, towering figure; unblessed by any broad, unifying po- 
litical impulse and cursed by the selfishness of a score of 
petty sovereigns, fell back into the stagnation of stolid indif- 
ference to await the era of inspiration that came a century 
later. France, delirious with the new liberty of man which, 
untempered by dependence on God, swept her into the license 
of the Revolution, misled by the selfish leadership of a false 
prophet, who built an empire on the sacrificed blood of misled 
patriots, drifted back into a century of hopeless indifference, 
content with nothing, but accepting everything. England, 
closing her eyes to the reasonable requests of her greatest col- 
ony and misled by the ignorance of a stubborn monarch and 
an imbecile ministry, succeeded on the one hand in losing her 
American colonial possessions in the new world, while in the 
old world ISTapoleon falsely vaunting himself as the evangel of 
this reawakened spirit of liberty and progress cunningly drove 
England into a spirit of antagonism to all that was new 
simply because it was new and into a blind devotion to all that 
was old simply because it was old. And so it came about that 
the splendid new spirit that swept over Europe, a spirit that 
should have been its civic regeneration, a spirit that called 
LaFayette and Steuben, Pulaski and Kosciousko, Eobert 
Morris from Liverpool and Albert Gallatin from Switzer- 
land, to this side of the ocean, grasped few of its possibilities 
because that spirit spent itself in blind gropings in a wilder- 
ness of leaderless wanderings. In such times and in such 
seething periods of unrest, a weak man may turn a nation into 
a mob, but it takes a great man to keep a nation from be- 



A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 37 

coining a mob. And therein lay the difference of outcome on 
this side the Atlantic from this epoch of unrest. It was the 
far-seeing vision of such men as Franklin and the fathers — 
wise beyond their day and generation — who led the people by 
the path of sane and sensible self-control in the new order of 
government. It takes the great need, the great crisis, the 
great call of a great people, to create great men and to the 
new world's great, heart-deep cry for leadership, Providence 
in its own time answered then as it has always answered since 
when the cry ascends. What a glorious roll of those immor- 
tals answered as the nation's call sounded. With reverence 
we look up to the long line of the fathers, who each to that 
clarion call answered — Adsum — Here am I — Washington, 
Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, of the Revolution, who gave us 
the Constitution with our country; Marshall and Webster, 
whose united efforts made that Constitution a living reality; 
Lincoln and Grant, who kept us, thank God, a united people 
under it. 

Another period of widespread flux and change is upon us 
to-day and not upon us alone but upon the whole world. The 
times are pregnant with unrest and the labors of travail are 
upon us. The great economic, commercial, social and other 
changes that invention, expansion, centralization have brought 
about, perplex, dumfound, dishearten us. We are just awak- 
ening to them and as yet we do not know how to meet them. 
But the unrest of this great people is an unrest for construc- 
tion and not for destruction and, thank God, an unrest that 
honestly hungers for leadership and light. The call of the 
nation to-day is for trusted guiding, and the lack of the nation 
is our inability to answer that cry. Can we doubt it will be 
answered ? The past of our country bids us have no doubt as 
to its future. The years of colonial struggle and unrest ended 
in Franklin and Washington. The many years of seething 
uncertainty through our pre-civil war era ended in Lincoln, 
and our present era of unsettled and unsettling unrest must 
end in leaders that will speak to the nation as these great men 



38 A Recall of Benjamin Franklin. 

of the past have spoken, not in volumes of words that are as 
unheeded as they are soon forgotten, but in vrords and counsel 
which, like the revolutionary fathers, shall ring true a cen- 
tury after they are spoken, in words of wise and sane counsel 
and warning that our children's children shall rise up and 
call blessed a century hence. I came across lately some words 
of Sydney Lanier's, penned just after the Civil War, but 
which strikingly and prophetically voice the unspoken yearn- 
ings of the nation's heart to-day. Lanier was looking forward 
to that sad, hopeless era of reconstruction ahead of the south- 
land and for which Lincoln, the South's truest and bravest 
friend, was most needed. He must have had the martyred 
president in mind when he vcrote : " I have been wondering 
where we are to get a great man that will be tall enough to see 
over the whole country and to direct that vast undoing of 
things which have to be accomplished in a few years. It is a 
situation in which mere cleverness will not begin to work. 
The horizon of cleverness is too limited; it does not embrace 
enough of the place of man, to enable a merely clever politi- 
cian such as those in which we abound, to lead matters prop- 
erly at this juncture. The vast generosities which whirl a 
small revenge out of the way as the winds whirl a leaf; the 
awful integrity which will pay a debt twice rather than allow 
the faintest flicker of suspicion about it; the splendid indig- 
nations which are also tender compassions and will in one 
moment be hustling the money changers out of the Temple and 
in the next be preaching love to them from the steps of it; 
where are we to find these ? It is time for a man to arise who 
is a man." 

My friends, here in this twentieth century the American 
nation, waiting for a leadership, groping in uncertainty, be- 
wildered by new questions, beset by false prophets, says, with 
Lanier, " It is time for a man to arise who is a man." When 
Providence and the unfolding of time shall answer that call, 
is hidden from our ken, but that time and that Providence we 
can await with a fortitude and a faith born of the conviction 



A Recall of Benjamin Franldin. 39 

that the study of the lives and teachings of Franklin and these 
great men of the past will in good time recall us to sure and 
safe and sane paths, born of a stern resolve that these great 
and wise men shall not have builded this great nation only to 
be undone by lesser minds and weaker men and a profound 
faith that, as in the past so now and hereafter, when the na- 
tion is prepared for leadership, the nation's leader has and 
always will be found. And with no misgivings but a grounded 
faith that this nation's mission to its own people and to all 
humanity, the mission of the standard bearer of constitution- 
ally limited government, let us march forward to the high 
destinies awaiting us in that spirit in which Lincoln faced the 
greatest human task ever allotted to man, when in his first 
inaugural he said, " My countrymen, one and all, think calmly 
and well on this whole subject. !N^othing valuable can be lost 
by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in 
hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, 
that object will be frustrated by taking time, but no good ob- 
ject can be frustrated by it. Intelligence, patriotism, Chris- 
tianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet for- 
saken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the 
best way all our present difficulties." 



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